Unlikely
by samaryley
Summary: Two-Bit and Marcia run into each other a few months after that fateful night. What happens is, to say the least, surprising.
1. The Dentist Office

**I wish I owned these characters, but I don't. Thank you, S.E. Hinton.**

She was the run-of–the-mill receptionist type: perfect hair, pleasant expression- there was no immediately apparent reason to judge her in any way. So I didn't.

"Can I help you, sir?"

Sir? Well, that's a fine howdy-do, then. I believe I've changed my mind. I think I _am_ gonna judge her. I think I like her just fine.

"Yeah, uh, I got sent over here from East Tulsa clinic… I'm Keith Mathews… I'm supposed to have a three o'clock appointment... They told me to give you these records." I handed over the manila envelope they had given me to bring along.

"Okay, Mr. Mathews, why don't you have a seat? We'll call you when we're ready."

"Have a seat" clearly hadn't been just a suggestion- there was no other choice. There wasn't even any wall to lean against. Every inch of the place was lined with chairs. I chose the one closest to the door. I can't explain it; I just like knowing I can get out of places if I have to.

Waiting rooms… I hate waiting rooms. I've got better things to do with my time than sit around perusing the latest issue of Reader's Digest. And the chairs- might as well be goddamn church pews- that's how uncomfortable they always are. What, are they worried you might get too comfortable in the chair and so caught up in your Boy's Life magazine that you'll want to stick around past closing time? Sheesh, I'm pretty sure a few cushions wouldn't bust their budgets.

I leaned back, pressing my vertebrae into the unforgiving wood slats of the chair, and took a good look around. Fishtank. There's always one, and this waiting room did not disappoint. I checked out the sad-looking creatures trapped inside. A few guppies and the gratuitous algae-eating bottom feeder.

Well, doesn't that just make you reevaluate how miserable your own life really could be. I might live on the wrong side of town, but at least I ain't stuck in a few gallons of recirculating dirty water, waiting with baited breath for the moment each day when some office peon drops a few paper-like morsels through the airhole at the top of my prison. Baited breath… fish… huh, that's kinda funny. I chuckled at the thought, earning a few suspicious looks from two Reader's Digest aficionados across the room.

And at least I don't hafta spend my whole life staring out at a roomful of miserable people with bad teeth sitting around in uncomfortable chairs reading second-rate magazines in a poorly lighted room with ugly wallpaper. What the hell is going on with this wallpaper anyway? Hell, it looks like a two-year old got hold of Ponyboy's colored pencils and went to town.

Yessiree, my life may not be any bowl of cherries but I've got it better than those poor aquarium residents, for sure.

If it wasn't for this damned toothache. Now I like to kid myself that I'm as tough as they come, but I'll be damned if this thing ain't completely kicking my ass. Started as nothing more than a sensitive tooth, just actin' up a bit when I fed it something too hot or cold, but, startin' a few weeks ago, that little bugger got feisty, and started actin' up all hours of the day, for no reason at all. Last two nights, I ain't hardly slept at all. So, enough's enough, I said this morning, and headed on over to the clinic. Turns out this little old overachiever cavity's more than they can handle there. I'm the lucky winner of a root canal. Which sucks enough in itself, but also sucks even more due to the fact that as soon as my Mom gets the bill for this one, we're gonna have to revisit that whole job/pulling your weight around here thing.

And that's never fun.

So, anyway, here I am at the honest-to-God dentist office. I've had cleanings and got my cavities filled before, but the dental clinic down on our side of town could always handle that kind of stuff. This super-cavity bought me a ticket to the big time. Not that I'm nervous or anything, I mean, I never heard of anything real bad happening to somebody at the dentist, but then again, one never does know. I remember Darry one time…

"Two-Bit?"

I looked up. Okay, now this girl I had definitely seen before. Somewhere. Sometime. I was pretty sure that I had been with her, somewhere. But I didn't think I had_ been_ with her, if you know what I mean. My mind gets a little hazy, sometimes, late at night. But this girl I would have remembered. She was real cute.

"Do you remember me?" Aw, well _that_ ain't really fair. Either way, that's a trap. I say yes, then I'm supposed to know her name; I say no, she gets insulted.

I raised my finger and prepared to say something charming, but she let me off the hook.

"Marcia. Cherry and I sat with you at the Nightly Double. A couple months ago."

Right. _Right_. Now I remembered. She was as just cute now as she had been then.

"You never called."

I had no idea what to say. Was she _kidding_? She and I both knew that hadn't even been her real number. I might not be the brightest guy on my side of town, but I know that her address is on the _other_ side, pretty much putting her out of my league.

"Well, that's why I'm here," I grinned. "I lost your number."

"Right," she smiled back. "Why _are_ you here?" she asked.

"Root canal," I answered.

"Oh," she nodded sympathetically.

"How 'bout you? Your teeth look fine to me," I said. She did have a great smile.

"I work here. This is my Dad's office. I help out with the filing and stuff, after school."

"That's cool," I said. Right, so this Soc girl who's Dad was a dentist had wanted me to call her. Let's not be ridiculous here. On the other hand, her Dad was about to put me under and poke at my mouth with sharp objects, so let's not be hasty in our judgment, either, I decided.

"So how've you been?" I asked her, wishing I could stand up out of the chair but feeling like, with no wall to lean on, it would be awkward.

"Well, you know, okay. Just school, and stuff."

She seemed a little nervous.

"I'm real sorry, you know, about what happened that night, with your friends." She didn't look at me when she said it, and I was glad.

Right. That. It had been _that_ night. No wonder I had forgotten about her. There was really nothing I wanted to remember from that night, or most of the week afterward, either. I wasn't sure what to say.

"Thanks," I chose, though it didn't feel quite right. There was a bit of an awkward silence.

"Mr. Mathews, the doctor is ready for you now," the hygenist called for me from the back door.

I stood up.

Marcia smiled, and said "It's real nice seeing you again, Two-Bit." Something in her voice surprised me, like it wasn't just your typical pleasantry, like maybe she meant it.

"You too," I answered, as the hygenist ushered me through the door.

"Good luck," she called, as the door shut behind me.

Good luck, indeed, I thought.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Not sure where I am going with this. Just responding to the lack of Marcia fics on the site. Maybe this will be a Two-Bit fic, maybe Marcia, maybe both... or maybe I scrap it. I dunno yet.**


	2. Even Less Likely

"Okay, Mr. Mathews, right in here," the hygienist said, guiding me into a room that was so orange I had to squint my eyes against it. Orange wallpaper, orange countertops, and an unbelievably orange vinyl dentist's chair into which she skillfully maneuvered me, at the same time attaching some bib-like item around my neck. Clearly these people wasted no time on pleasantries. There was no "How's the family, how are you enjoying school;" none of that. Just "sit down, shut up, and open wide," pretty much. So that's exactly what I did, all the while continuing to marvel at the sheer orangeness of the place. Between this and the wallpaper in the waiting room, the office's interior designer must have been heavy into some LSD or something, no joking. This is what it looks like growing up when you're an orange seed, I thought, and wanted to laugh, but my mouth was already pried permanently open.

Course that's when they start in with the questions, once they've got your jaw locked in the fully open position and held that way by a full-fledged goddamned erector set. The dentist appeared out of nowhere, introduced himself as Dr. Browning, and began the interrogation.

"How long has this been bothering you, Keith?" he asked. He was coming at me with an intimidating looking sharp metal object as I offered up my best attempt at "a week or so."

He nodded, and offered absolutely no indication of whether or not he had understood my response, or whether he even cared about what it might have been.

"First root canal, I see," he commented. I wasn't sure whether that necessitated a response or not, so I offered up a grunt of some sort, which seemed to satisfy him. "This tooth looks pretty damaged... we might end up having to extract it."

I grunted again.

"You allergic to any medications, Keith?" It seemed to me that a question of that nature might best be asked when a patient was able to fully utilize their mouth for a response, but hell, this guy went to dental school, and I didn't, so who was I to judge? There is no possible way anyone would have been able to distinguish what I actually said, which was "Not that I know of," from what I might have said, which could easily have been "every drug on Earth," but, again, he simply nodded and poked around a bit more, taking a nice stab right at the most painful part of my gum with his shiny little implement of torture. I guess in this office they operated on the theory of "we'll find out whether he's allergic to anything by seeing if he dies in the chair after we drug him up." I summoned up my best resolve not to die in any chair so ungodly orange as the one in which I sat.

Alright, then, Keith, we're gonna put you out for a while so we can work on Mr. Molar back here. You just breathe regular and let the gas do its work, okay? We'll wake you up as soon as we're done." A mask descended on my nose just as I saw a rather long needle heading in the general direction of my mouth. I closed my eyes and breathed in and, thankfully, all of the orange quickly faded to black.

.....................................

"Keith, wake up. You're all done." The hygienist was shaking me awake. I woulda _sworn_ I had just closed my eyes, but the clock on the wall said it was an hour and a half later than when I had sat in the waiting room staring at _that_ clock. The room came into focus and it was, unfortunately, even more orange than I had remembered. It made me feel a little sick, actually, waking up woozy from the gas and being faced head on with such a violent explosion of color. I never was a big fan of orange to begin with, but this experience was really helping me to turn the corner into a full-fledged hatred of it.

I sat there for a minute while they removed my bib and wiped the drool from the corner of my mouth. Half of my face was numb and I'm sure I looked real tough.

"How you feeling, Mr. Mathews?" one of them asked, lifting the arm on the chair so I could slide my feet over the side.

"Just fine and dandy," I answered, though that isn't exactly what came out. My tongue and lips were not cooperating with my brain.

I stood up and shook off the last effects of the gas. The dentist patted me on the back.

"We ended up doing an extraction, Keith. The tooth was a little too far gone to salvage." I moved my numb tongue to what was now a blank space in my mouth. At least it was in the back, I thought, thankfully. I wasn't gonna have to look like one of those Brumley guys with no front teeth.

"Okay," I said. What else could I say, really… I mean, it's not like I could demand they put it back or something.

"Alright, well, here's a prescription for an antibiotic, and you give us a call if that extraction site gives you any trouble." He handed me a piece of paper which contained writing completely unintelligible to any human being who was not either a doctor or a pharmacist. I shoved it into my pocket.

This time I just nodded. Speaking seemed hardly worth the effort. He half-pushed, half-escorted me around the corner and back down the hall to the reception area. As the dentist bade me farewell and I heard the door shut behind me, I was surprised to see Marcia sitting in one of the aforementioned torturously uncomfortable chairs, looking at me.

"How'd it go?" she asked.

"Okay, I guess," I shrugged. "I got one less tooth now," I added, trying to make my speech somewhat intelligible.

"Well, you still got a nice smile, anyway," she said. "Did they give it to you?"

"Huh?"

"The tooth. Did you get to keep it?"

"What? _Why?_"

"Oh, come on, Two-Bit! Are you trying to tell me the Tooth Fairy doesn't come over to the East side of town?"

"Baby, believe me, the Tooth Fairy wouldn't hardly last more'n a second in my neighborhood. She'd be robbed of her teeth, her virtue, and her magic wand, to boot, 'fore she even crossed over to the East side o' Sutton!"

She laughed and stood up, disappearing into the back while I checked out.

"Don't go anywhere," she called over her shoulder. "I'll be right back."

I couldn't believe my ears. This cute Soc girl was telling me _not_ to get lost? This was certainly unexpected, and… _different_… though not unappreciated. I suddenly had no future plans to move, at least not until directed by the little lady to do so. I filled out the paperwork and handed it back to the receptionist, who, again, giving me far more respect than I probably deserved, referred to me a second time as "sir." I was starting to wonder if this office might not be a secret passageway into a new dimension, one where greasers were referred to by fancy titles, and Socs, rather than telling us to get lost, demanded we stick around. I wondered if this happened in all dentist's offices or if I had just hit the greaser jackpot with this one.

She finally reappeared through the door, a small vial in her hand. I assumed it was some sort of additional drug her father had sent my way, so I was surprised when she handed it to me and announced that it was my tooth. Nice, I thought, my now demoralized and useless molar. It was demoralized, and I was demolarized. I laughed out loud at my joke, and she seemed to assume that it was due to having been given the tooth, rather than a result of my my very narrowly concealed insanity.

"Uh... _thanks?_" I suggested, raising an eyebrow. Girls always seemed to like that.

It worked, because she smiled.

"You got any little brothers or sisters?" she asked.

"Kid sister, why?"

"Give it to her and let her tell your parents she lost a tooth." She grinned a surprisingly devilish grin at me, and continued, "Hey, _somebody_ should benefit from all your pain and suffering, right?" God, this girl was getting cuter by the second.

"I s'pose you're right about that," I said. I still hadn't moved. Hell, she told me not to, and I was starting to feel like I just might do anything this girl told me to, what with a smile - and a body - like she had. My eyes had begun wandering south, and my head snapped back up to attention as she spoke.

"So… I know you just got a tooth extracted and everything," she started, twirling her hair around her finger in a way that turned me on more than I would have thought possible for such an innocent act, "but… would you like to go get a soda, or something? No big deal, just at Rusty's or something?"

She had to be kidding. She really wanted me to go somewhere with her? To be seen, with _me_, in public?

"Yeah, I guess I can fit that in." I sounded like a drunk, what with my mouth half paralyzed, but she didn't seem all that turned off by it. Come to think of it, a good deal of the time, I _was_ a drunk, and I certainly had been that night at the movies when we met, so I probably didn't sound all that different than usual - to her, anyway. "I, uh… don't have my car here, though. I took the bus." Soda had borrowed the car to go see Ponyboy's track meet. I was supposed to meet him there, but hell, there was no way I was turning down a drink with a cute girl to go watch the kid run around in circles wearing skimpy shorts. No siree, bub.

"That's okay… I have my car here. You probably shouldn't be driving, anyway… you still seem a little…out of it." I wasn't _out_ of anything, least so far as I could tell, but I was getting more _in_ to _her_ with each passing moment. And the next second, when she reached out and grabbed my hand – the one _not_ holding my bloody tooth in a vial – and pulled me out the door, I was more than happy to oblige.

"C'mon, let's go… all the good seats at the counter get taken after five." She pulled me outside into the parking lot where her shiny little corvette sat, the sun glinting off the hood and nearly blinding me. I found I actually preferred the blinding sunlight to the orange hell I had just emerged from.

I wonder how many poor molars it took to pay for _this_? I thought, as I climbed in and admired the leather seats. Something about this situation was considerably _less _than tough, me getting driven somewhere in a girly car by a real looker like her, but for some reason I was willing to go with it. I actually was kinda glad I didn't have my car; it woulda bothered me, sticking a classy girl like Marcia in my dirty old heap of tin. Kinda like putting caviar in a sardine can. Or somethin' like that.

She drove us over to Rusty's, neither of us saying much on the way, though she did catch me staring at her once and smiled a smile that made me wonder just exactly what _was_ really going on in that upper-class mind of hers. I never would have thought that it could have been the same thing I had been thinking about, when I was looking at _her_, but something about that smile…

I must be still high from the laughing gas, I decided, snapping back into reality. Seriously, was I _kidding?_ There was _no way_ this girl could be interested in me. She was just being nice, probably pitying me for everything that went down after that night we met, with Johnny and Pony... I was Jerry Lewis to her Grace Kelly, for Christ's sake. And I made that tragically clear as I tripped getting out of the car in my hurry to try to get around to her door and open it for her. She stepped out and laughed at me sprawled out on the ground.

"You're really funny, Two-Bit."

Yeah, real funny, I thought, wondering how many of her upper-crust friends had witnessed that stellar example of chivalry gone awry. I stood up and she took my hand again, leading me into the diner as I dusted myself off. I recognized a few of the kids in there from school, but this place was definitely out of my element and quite a few people shot glances my way to make sure I knew it. I was more than happy to return the look with a cheesy grin and a wink, which made them all look away pretty quick.

We sat at the counter and she ordered a Cherry Coke while I opted for a root beer, though one without the "root" was sounding pretty damned good right about then. Damn, but this girl was good. So good I felt kinda nervous being around her. Yeah, a Bud would have taken the edge off quite nicely... At first, our conversation seemed a bit awkward, but eventually we settled into a pretty comfortable groove. We chatted about nothing too serious, but she had quite a sense of humor on her and _that_, in my book, is just about the sexiest thing a girl can have, well, besides the obvious…uh…physical attributes. And she had those, too; don't get me wrong. She had a whole lot going for her, in a whole lot of ways.

It was dark by the time we got up to leave, and as we walked outside she shivered. I took off my jacket and went to put it around her shoulders, leaning her up against the wall of the diner as I pulled it over her shoulders. In that second she looked up and it was pretty obvious as to what was gonna happen next. I leaned down and in, the sweetness of her Cherry Coke still evident as I pressed my lips up against hers, and closed my eyes.

"Mr. Mathews…. _Mr. Mathews!_" I was being shaken.

What the…? I opened my eyes and immediately closed them again at the onslaught of orange. Who the _hell_ thought that color was a good idea? And the taste in my mouth wasn't Cherry coke, it was disgusting gritty toothpaste.

A dream? That was a fucking _dream_? Are you _kidding_ me? I couldn't remember having been so annoyed in quite a long time.

The dentist and hygienists were talking to me, telling me they took the tooth out… I guess that part wasn't a dream… but I wasn't listening. Eventually, they stood me up and walked me out to the waiting room, where I was not surprised to see…

Nobody.

Just the receptionist, smiling at me as I walked over to fill out the forms. I filled in all the information, signed at the bottom, and then asked the date so I could fill that in.

"It's the first, hon. April Fool's Day. You better watch your back out there tonight," she joked. I noticed that, in the real world, I was no longer "sir."

Now _that_ was rich, I had to admit. April Fools Day, and nobody makes a bigger fool of ol' Two-Bit than ol' Two-Bit himself. I had to laugh as I handed her the papers and turned to walk out the door. Hell, least the only one who knew what a fool I'd been was me. Thinkin' a girl like that'd want to kiss me… I just shook my head, and wished the receptionist a good night.

"Oh, Mr. Mathews, wait," she called. I turned back around. "I almost forgot. Dr. Browning's daughter wanted me to give this to you." She walked around from behind her desk and handed me a folded paper. I unfolded it and read it. On top was a phone number.

_Two-Bit, _

_Here's my number. Don't lose it this time! I heard they took your tooth out… I hope the Tooth Fairy is good to you. Call me!_

_Marcia_

I stood against the outside wall of the office, waiting for the bus, reading the note again. Any other day, any other girl, and I would have been at the first pay phone I could find, setting up a date for that very night, if not sooner.

But this time, I decided, I would wait. For another day, at least.


End file.
